Part One: ‘It was a life of darkness’ (with video)

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Her aunt and uncle refused to take her in, so a neighbour — one of her parents’ friends — sold Limey to a brothel in Kampong Chang province.

Over the next 10 years, she was moved from brothel to brothel until finally she was rescued by Somaly Mam, who herself had been sold as a child into the sex trade.

“In the brothel, I had nothing, no personal internal energy, encouragement or anything like that,” says Limey, through tears and a translator.

“It was a life of darkness. I had no courage at all. It was no life at all. When I was first sold, I did not know what a brothel was. But I was forced to serve a client. In all the years, I never saw the sunlight ... I was not allowed to leave the place and I was forced to serve at least 20 clients a day. Otherwise, I was not given rice and I was given electric shocks.”

There was no way out. Orphaned, Limey was only a little girl with no education, who was unable to read or write.

“I had no choice. I had no parents. I was drugged. I was just drugged. I didn’t know where I could go or where I should go for help.”

The drug of choice for pimps and brothel owners is crystal methamphetamines — speed — because it’s cheap, readily available and makes the girls more active.

The men who abused Limey were from all over the world. She remembers Cambodians, Africans and other foreigners. Regardless of where they were from, they were all the same. They paid money to abuse her. None tried to help her.

“While I was in the brothel, I hated all men. I believed that all men are bad because most of the time when you asked them to help you, they would say you’re here because you chose to be here. It is not a result of poverty in your family or difficulty in your family. It’s you yourself who wants to be here. You deserve this. You deserve to be in this situation.”

She was kept with a group of 11 others, who were moved within one city, from one brothel to another. It’s a story common here where an estimated 30,000 children are sexually exploited and many of whom are both undocumented and enslaved. Locked up and isolated, they became like sisters.

“We were only moved in the city, but we were moved because if we stayed in one brothel a long time, the clients would not think we were new. If you go to a new brothel, then they think you are newcomers.”

At some brothels, the girls were lined up so clients could take their pick. But most brothel owners didn’t let the girls leave the dark, squalid cells they lived in and simply sent clients to them, one after the other.

Twenty or more clients a day.

Although those girls earned tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars for the pimps over the years, they got nothing.

“Forget about money,” Limey says. “Even rice. Sometimes, I wouldn’t even get that.”

There were failed attempts to escape.

“There were gang members who always watched us. Sometimes we would tell clients that we wanted to escape, but the clients would tell the brothel owner and as a consequence of that we were beaten over and over and over.”

Malnourished, brothel girls appear younger than they are and the drugs they’re given make them livelier and more alert. Limey didn’t talk about how they were told to dress or what the living conditions were like beyond being kept in the dark, fed little and beaten.

But in most brothels, the girls wear cheap mini-skirts and dresses. Even the young ones who are little more than toddlers are dressed and made up like beauty pageant contestants with bright lipstick, face powders and other face-whitening makeup.

Whatever glamour they manage to conjure is at odds with the brothel cells where they take the customers. They’re are usually windowless, dank, dirty and furnished only with a wooden cot covered and a well-used mat.

Limey says she and the other girls were aware of the dangers of HIV/AIDS and had access to contraception. But many clients refused condoms.

“If we told them to use condoms, they even got furious and they would start to beat us.”

Many of the girls contracted sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. Some got pregnant. None of that mattered.

“Even if you got pregnant, you were still forced to serve the client. Some girls were forced to have abortions. Sometimes we were beaten until the baby would fall by itself out of us.”

Twelve years ago, when Limey was 17, she was rescued during a brothel raid that was initiated by investigatore from AEFSIP — the French acronym for Acting for Women in Distressing Situations, which Somaly Mam founded in 1996."

“I never thought I would be rescued. Not at all. I thought my life would end in a brothel for sure. All that was happening to me in those years, I saw no hope and I could never have imagined being who I am now.”

*

Limey is 29 now, strong and healthy after several years of good food, rehabilitation and intensive counselling.

Once illiterate, she now reads and writes KHMER, the official language of Cambodia, and is learning English. She’s a secretary for AEFSIP, going to dodgy neighbourhoods with brothels, massage parlours, karaoke bars and beer gardens offering help to women and children.

The scars she bears are internal, evident only because of the tears she can’t hold back as she talks about the lost years of her life. It’s a path she chosen — telling her story. She chose to be part of AEFSIP’s Voices for Change program, which provides support and training to survivors who want tell their own stories.

It’s a gruelling choice. Limey wept through most of the interview, refusing an offer to take a break. She’s determined to have her voice heard.

“I want people to feel pity and sympathy for us. I want them to know that victims like me do exist and I want them to know that victims like us need them to help. I want people to know that these victims do not want to do what they are doing now. They are in this situation, but they have still their own hearts.”

She doesn’t talk about the future; doesn’t think about it. Limey is very much focused on the present and doing what she can to help other girls and women like her.

“During my life in the brothel, I didn’t understand anything about real society. I had never participated at any minute in this real society. I was there in the brothel and I only saw the men who came to the brothel ... When I was not in real society I hated all men.

For the future, I am not thinking about myself. I am only thinking what I can do to help women in my situation. And because of that, I have not thought about having a husband or a family.”

Since her rescue, AEFSIP has become Limey’s family. Somaly Mam is her role model, mentor and “the person who shaped me.”

“I never believed I could do this sort of thing. I can only do it because of the encouragement of the victim survivors and Sister Somaly. She teaches us how to stand up for survivors and as survivors, we can help other survivors not only in Cambodia but in other places as well because only survivors know how survivors feel.”

*

Mam thinks she was 12 when she was sold to a pimp. She doesn’t know her exact age because, like many Cambodian children, she has no birth certificate and had no identification papers.

The goal of AEFSIP and the Somaly Mam Foundation is to do “humanly correct development” as a means to combat the trafficking of women and children for sex slavery.

Initially, they offered shelter in a one-room house on stilts in Phnom Penh where Mam, the staff and about a dozen rescued women and girls all slept together on mats on the floor.

Also on the floor were 10 sewing machines.

“The sewing machines were crucial,” Mam writes in her book, Road of Lost Innocence. “A trained tailor who knew how to draw a pattern and fit a dress could make money — honest money — and hold her head high.”

Since Somaly began her work, more than 6,000 women and girls benefited from the shelter-based care and training programs in cooking, sewing, weaving and hairdressing at AEFSIP’s three centres in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Kampong Chom, 121 returned to their communities — 32 of whom have set up their own businesses with the help of a small grant from AEFSIP.

Mam remains at the heart of the operation, actively rescuing girls and women from brothels. In November, she and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof went on a police raid of a brothel in northern Cambodia. A young woman and five girls were rescued. The youngest was 12.

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Part One: ‘It was a life of darkness’ (with video)

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